The German airline Lufthansa notified that it will cancel almost all its flights in Germany on Wednesdaydue to the call for a strike by ground staff, thus adding to an already chaotic summer at airports across Europe.
“Lufthansa will have to cancel almost the entire flight schedule at its Frankfurt and Munich hubs this Wednesday,” the airline said in a statement.
More than 1,000 flights will be cancelled, including some from Tuesday, affecting some 134,000 passengers, the company added.
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The Verdi union organization called for a strike between 01:45 GMT on Wednesday and 04:00 GMT on Thursday “to increase the pressure” on the management, which is demanding a salary increase of 9.5%.
Wednesday’s strike will affect ground employees, especially maintenance, but also aircraft towing vehicle operators, essential to the smooth running of the airport.
Lufthansa will cancel a total of 678 flights in Frankfurt and 345 in Munich, 47 of them this Tuesday. Some 45 long-haul flights in Germany were already canceled on Tuesday.
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Strike impact may lead to occasional cancellations and delays on Thursday and Friday
In total, some 7,500 passengers from Asia, the United States and South America were unable to board their flights. to Germany as planned, Lufthansa said in a statement.
“The impact of the strike may cause occasional cancellations and delays on Thursday and Friday,” the airline said. The strike comes at the height of the high season, a few days before the start of the school holidays in two regions of southern Germany.
In addition, passengers have already suffered long waits at airports and a series of flight cancellations due to staff shortages in recent weeks.
Since the lifting of health restrictions at the beginning of the year, airlines and airports have struggled to meet the sharp increase in demand, after two years of low air traffic, during which many employees were lost.
(You may be interested: Are you planning to travel? There are intense air delays in Europe and the US.)
An estimated 7,000 workers are currently needed in the airline industry in Germany, according to a study by the economic institute IW published at the end of June.
Lufthansa has already canceled some 6,000 flights this summer, while the country’s first airport, Frankfurt, intends to reduce the schedule to “further stabilize air operations” interrupted.
AFP
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